I’m a sucker for Joel Edgerton movies. I’ll give any movie that he’s in a chance. I first learned of him when I saw the vastly underrated Warrior. This film follows a fairly predictable sports-drama formula. Still, for me, it was elevated to a Top 100 all-time movie by the performances of Edgerton, Tom Hardy, and Nick Nolte. Edgerton continued to impress with The Gift, a film that he both starred in and directed. Since then, he’s had memorable performances in movies that critics received well, but didn’t do well at the box office. Loving, Midnight Special, The Green Knight, It Comes At Night, and Boy Erased all earned Rotten Tomatoes critics’ scores of >80% fresh, yet each failed to reach $20 million at the box office. While I didn’t particularly care for any of those five movies, Edgerton continued to impress.
Category Archives: Felicity Jones
The Brutalist (2024)
Brutal. That was how I had already decided how I was going to describe Brady Corbet’s (The Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux) The Brutalist, regardless of what I thought about it. With a runtime of three hours and forty-five minutes (plus a 15-minute intermission), I asked myself before my theater viewing, “Why am I seeing this?” The answer is not because I had any interest in seeing it but because it had been nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Lead Actor (Adrien Brody – The Pianist, The Jacket), Best Supporting Actress Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything, On the Basis of Sex), and Best Supporting Actor Guy Pierce (Memento, The King’s Speech). I saw it in the theater because I was told by content creators I follow that the viewing experience had to be in the theater as Corbet shot the film using VistaVision. This process involves shooting the film horizontally on 35mm film stock to achieve a higher-resolution image for large screens. I wouldn’t have noticed a difference if I had not learned this beforehand.
The Theory of Everything (2014)
The best part of James Marsh’s (Man on a Wire, Shadow Dancer) Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything is the stunning performances of Eddie Redmayne (My Week With Marilyn, Les Miserables) and Felicity Jones (The Invisible Woman, Like Crazy). Both performers have been on the scene for quite some time, but this movie will open some doors for years to come. Redmayne is a shoo-in for Best Actor, and based on what I’ve seen so far, he’s the leader to win. I do believe that his lead will be short-lived, though. I plan on seeing Foxcatcher this weekend, and I think that Steve Carell will give the performance of his career and be the clear-cut favorite heading into awards season. However, I don’t think I’ve been more disappointed in any other year than I have been with the movies of 2014. I feel as if nothing, thus far, has exceeded expectations and that only a few films (Nightcrawler, Kill the Messenger) have even met expectations. There have been a couple of movies (most notably The Lunchbox and The Drop) that had little fanfare surrounding them beforehand and ended up being pleasant surprises. But for the most part, 2014 has been a massive letdown. This year still has potential, but with each passing week and average movie, that hope is slowly but surely dwindling. So it might seem like I wasn’t overly impressed or was even disappointed with The Theory of Everything. However, that’s not necessarily true. It was a good movie and one that I recommend seeing.
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